Herod the Fox (The Politics of Jesus, Week 2)

Psalm 27

Luke 13:31-35

Political elections are divisive, and don’t always bring out our best.  I’m reminded of what pundit P.J. O’Rourke once wrote about Democrats and Republicans:

“The Democrats are the party of government activism, the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller, and get the chickweed out of your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then get elected and prove it.”

In a presidential election season, campaigns can get nasty.  The candidates do what we tell our kids NOT to do: they call each other names.  Liar, socialist, crony, traitor, Muslim.

Marco Rubio referred to Donald Trump’s campaign as a “freak show.”  Rubio called him “sensitive” and “thin-skinned.”  Trump responded by calling Rubio a “clown,” a “lightweight,” and a “baby.”

Trump has called Lindsay Graham “an idiot” and Jeb Bush an “unhappy person” and a “low energy loser.”

 

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said Trump “looks like he’s got a squirrel sitting on his head.”

Rand Paul called Chris Christie the “king of bacon” for porkbarrel spending in his state.

The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart was fond of calling Mitch McConnel a “turtle,” because his face looks like a turtle. 

But it’s not as if this political name-calling is new.  Teddy Roosevelt referred to William McKinley as “having the backbone of a chocolate eclaire.”

Harry Truman called Republicans a “bunch of snolly-gusters.”

Roosevelt’s vice-president John Garner was referred to as “a labor-baiting, poker playing, whiskey drinking, evil old man.”

Winfield Scott was called “the peacock of American politics, all fuss and feathers and fireworks.”

Lyndon Johnson once said of Gerald Ford, “He’s a nice guy, but he played too much football with his helmet off.”

But of course we would never call one another names in church.  Here in the stained glass quiet of our sanctuary.  Reading the sacred gospels which present to thee thy sacred and perfect Lord Jesus Christ.  Of course he would never be caught calling someone a name.

Er, wait a minute.  Let me change that just a bit.  In fact, he did.  In fact, that’s exactly what happens in our reading from Luke.  Jesus calls Herod Antipas a fox.  Now who was Herod Antipas? 

The Herod in our story today is Herod Antipas, son of the violent Herod the Great who ruled Palestine when Jesus was born.  When Herod the Great died, he separated his territory into tetrarchs – four parts – for his sons.  And Herod Antipas became ruler of Galilee, where Jesus grew up and where Jesus taught and healed for the majority of his public ministry.  Herod served at the pleasure of the Roman Emperor, first Augustus, then later Tiberius.  His job is to keep the peace and keep the tax revenue flowing to Rome.

Now when the Pharisees come to Jesus to warn him that Herod Antipas wants to kill him – are they telling the truth?  They might be.  This is the same Herod who  imprisoned and then beheaded John the Baptist.  And yet the Pharisees may have been playing games with Jesus.  Elsewhere in Luke we’re told that Herod wanted to meet Jesus and see him perform signs.  And in Luke 23, when Pontius Pilate – who rules in Jerusalem – sends Jesus to Herod for trial, Herod fails to condemn him to death, and sends him back to Pilate.  Did he believe Jesus was innocent?  Or was he a sly politician who wanted to avoid executing a popular Jew from his region?

Herod Antipas, like all politicians, invested his time in economic development.  He rebuilt the city of Sepphoris and founded the lakeside city of Tiberias.  These cities were important economic engines in Galilee.  So it’s important to see that Herod isn’t a monster.  He’s trying to improve the regional economy.

Political leadership is hard work.  Managing economies, health crises, and large demographic shifts is hard work.  Creating a structure with both boundaries and freedom, so that all kinds of people can get along, can find good work, and can raise their families – this is hard work.  So let’s give Herod Antipas a break.   Let’s give our own political leaders a break.  What they’re doing is difficult.  It’s also noble and necessary.  Good governance is one of the ways we experience God’s blessing as the capacity to flourish as human beings.

So why did Jesus resort to name calling?  I suppose the best clue is the pair of images we find in this story.  There is a fox, but then in the very next moment Jesus refers to himself as a mother hen. 

Wes Anderson made a movie out of a Roald Dahl children’s book, “Fantastic Mr. Fox.”  It was stop animation, using little puppet foxes with realistic looking fur.  But they dressed in tweed suits and wore pajamas to bed like the ones my grandpa wore.  So what was Mr. Fox like?  He was a fox.  He sustained himself and his family by being a chicken thief.  Then he gave up that dangerous life and became a journalist.  But he was a fox.  So he missed stealing chickens.  And behind his wife’s back, he went back to stealing chickens from three mean farmers called Boggins, Bunce, and Bean.

By calling Herod a fox, Jesus wasn’t making a point about Herod’s character or lack of virtue.  He was pointing to the untrustworthiness of Herod because of his role.  He was charged with maintaining a brutal and unjust system that harmed people.  So he was a functionary.  He wasn’t free to govern in a way that all could flourish.  He couldn’t have done that even if he wanted to.  He had to act in a particular way in order to keep his appointment as the Roman appointee to rule Galilee.  His job was to maintain Rome’s brutal machine – a machine that benefited Roman citizens and excluded the poor Jews of Galilee.  A machine that benefited those born into privilege and tightened the screws on the poor through exorbitant taxation.  Herod was simply a cog in a machine that dehumanized people.  He stole their dignity.

The mother hen has a different relationship to the small chicks.  The hen gathers them and protects them.  The hen pulls them close and looks out for their best interests.  Jesus here contrasts God’s new realm arriving in his own life with the realm of Roman Empire manifested in the fox Herod.  God protects and cares for the little ones, the poor, and the sick.  Empires are systems that deny the dignity and worth of those without a voice, those without power, land, wealth, those physically sick or mentally unhealthy.  Empires preserve themselves at all costs.  God arrives in the life of Jesus, the one who refuses to preserve himself so that those sick and poor and demon possessed can be healed.

Now speaking of demoniacs, I would like to call your attention to a curious feature of today’s reading.  Jesus appears to connect his work of casting out demons with the threat from Herod.  The demoniacs play a very important role in Luke’s picture of Jesus’ ministry.  By connecting Herod’s threat with Jesus’ insistence that he will keep on healing demoniacs, Luke suggests that there’s something political about demon possession.  What is it?

I can only guess here.  Demon possession was the way of talking about severe mental illness in first century Palestine.  When a person acted self-destructively, harmed themselves or others, appeared irrational or uncontrollable, exhibited split personality, hallucinations, or some kind of psychotic break that left them without speech, others attributed this kind of behavior to a life inhabited by a demon or demons. 

Today we know that people have genetic predispositions to mental illness.  But it can often express itself as a result of trauma or stress.  It can appear in a person’s life as a coping mechanism that protects them from facing some overwhelming experience that can’t be integrated into life.  But perhaps ancient cultures had some sense of this connection too.  There seems to be some awareness that demoniacs are people who have broken psychologically with reality as the result of living in a traumatic and abusive relation to harmful systems that dominate life and make it unlivable. 

The shame, the lack of dignity, the violent penalty for any resistance, the constant threat of prison, beatings or death; the grinding poverty of a debt systems designed to turn the crank on the poor, the suffocating levels of taxation.  All of this was a crushing weight on Galilean Jews that creating enormous rage and lust for retaliation.  And yet you couldn’t.  You had to shove it down.  And some people snapped.  Call them “demoniacs.”  And Jesus responds to Herod’s threat by saying – “These people you are destroying, I’ll keep healing them.”

So what does our loyalty to Jesus and God’s new kingdom mean for our own political loyalties and allegiances?  Does it mean that as Christians we must belong to one political party or the other?  Or must we secede from the two-party system and form a party of “Christian” independents?  Or does it mean that we can participate in the political system as long as we recognize that all ideologies, all party affiliations, carry demonic possibilities within them?

Do those of us loyal to Jesus the crucified God have different values and priorities than other people?  Do we want different things than Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, or atheists?  Usually not.  All of us want safety, security, peace, opportunity, dignity.  So then is the only difference that Christians do their best to avoid creating systems with insiders and outsiders?  Is it that Christians have reason to argue for the blessings and goods of government to include everyone and not just some?  Is it that Christians want the rain to fall on the unrighteous as well as the righteous?

Today’s reading is about foxes and chickens.  It’s about the difference between the fox who steals into the roost to steal away with the little chicks, and the mother hen whose job is to gather and protect the little chicks under her wings.  The political question today becomes: what’s good – what’s truly good – for the little chicks?  What’s good for children?  For the very old?  For those with mental illness?  For those disabled and unable to work?  For those trapped in generational poverty?  For people whose lives have been fractured by trauma and stress?

I have no interest in trying to provide you with answers.  I simply invite you into a life shaped deeply by a commitment to practices of healing for the sick, to relationships that affirm the dignity and worth of every single human being.  I invite you into an ongoing conversation with others, shaped by the life and ministry of the one we follow towards the cross during this season of Lent.  Amen.